Rails - Oct 2010 - How can I render a partial using a traditional (outside of MVC) erb file in Rails 3?

I wrote following module in Rails 3 to generate .json files using erb
templates:

    module TemplateGenerator
        require "erb"

        def generate_menu(website_id)
          menu_template = open_and_read_template("lib/menu.json.erb")
          @website.find(website_id)
          @home_page = @website.pages.first
          create_file(menu_template,"public/menu.json")
      end

        private

          def open_and_read_template(file_path)
            file = File.open(file_path, "rb")
              file.read
        end

        def create_file(template,file_name)
          erb = ERB.new( template )
              File.open(file_name, ''w'') do |f|
                f.write erb.result(binding)
              end
        end

    end

The erb file is:

    {
        "text": "Menu",
        "items": [
            {
                "text": "<%= @home_page.title %>",
            },
            <%= render :partial => ''item'', :collection
=>
@home_page.children.sort_by{|c| c.sibling_order} %>
            ]
    }

and I''m trying to display this recursive partial:

    {
        "text": <%= item.title %>,
        <% if item.children? %>
        "items": [
            <%= render :partial => ''item'', :collection
=>
item.children.sort_by{|c| c.sibling_order} %>
        ]
        <% end %>
    },



My question is how can I get the render method to work in this instance when
I call generate_menu during an action in my application? Is there a better,
more ''rails'' way to create files using an erb template?

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